LibriVox recording of The Pathfinder, by James Fenimore Cooper. Read by Mark F. Smith.

Natty Bumppo goes by many names: La Longue Carabine, Hawk Eye, Leatherstocking, and in this tale, The Pathfinder. Guide, scout, hunter, and when put to it, soldier, he also fills a lot of roles in pre-Revolution upstate New York. An old friend, Sergeant Dunham of the 55th Regiment of Foot, asks him to guide his daughter through the wilderness to the fort at Oswego where Dunham serves. With the French engaging native Indian allies against the British and the Yankee colonists, such a journey is far from safe.

Dunham has a plan in mind - to see his daughter Mable married off to the most redoubtable frontiersman and marksman in the territory, who is Pathfinder himself. But as an attractive and marriageable young lady, she draws other suitors. Then a military expedition contrives to put Sgt. Dunham, Mable, Pathfinder, and two other wooers into an isolated and dangerous garrison. Here treachery raises the stakes, and with the soldiers of the detachment shot down or captured, all of them must show mettle for any of them to escape with their scalps.


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M4B format available


This audio is part of the collection: The LibriVox Free Audiobook Collection
It also belongs to collections: Audio Books & Poetry; Community Audio

Artist/Composer: James Fenimore Cooper
Date: 2008-10-15
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; audiobook; cowboy; frontiersman; marksman; western

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: BookReader365 - - August 28, 2009
Subject: Great
enjoyed this book which i had to read for school this summer.

Reviewer: Chapter&Verse - - March 5, 2009
Subject: Good Sequel to "The Last of the Mohicans!"
Inspired by a rescreening of "The Last of the Mohicans" I checked out "The Pathfinder", which James Fenimore Cooper wrote as a sequel to "Mohicans." It has nearly all the same elements: Daniel Day-Lewis' character returns as the hero, he's got his Indian friend Chingachgook still, and once again there's the daughter of an English soldier to be protected.

As in "Mohicans," it comes down to the valor and backwoods skills of Hawkeye/Pathfinder/La Longue Carabine and Chingachgook to overcome sneaky Indians employed by the Canadian French. Instead of a wholesale massacre on the trail, this time there's a retail one in an isolated outpost, but no less deadly for all that. And this time our hero is actively contending for the girl!

If you liked "Mohicans" this is a listen in the same mode, read in lively fashion by Mark Smith.